etrayamemes | TDM 005

⏵ arrival ⏴
Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in a sterile hospital bed in a clean, white room to the hum of machines under the unnatural lighting common to well-kept institutions. Every bit was designed to be comforting and calming, even with the jarring undercurrent of this situation.

The first face they see is Aurora's: her smile appears to be warm, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. She might offer a quick explanation, or leave characters to figure it out for themselves depending on their approach.

The door to the room swings open, revealing a hallway that stretches out ahead of them. There’s noise from outside and strong pumpkin spice scents coming from the lobby. Ah, muffins and tea. Grab one and head into the crisp, sunny fall morning ahead.

⏵ potluck ⏴
Cutthroat Iron Etrayan Bake-Off

As you step out of the arrival holding area into the main thoroughfare, the entire street has been turned into tents and chef stations to accommodate the activities of thirty people at once. There’s seats, trailers, and robots bustling about to make sure everyone is ready.

A couple of cheerful robots in aprons and colorful sweaters approach and redirect you as you step towards the cooking area. There’s gas ranges, ovens, grills, blast chillers, mixers, and set walk-ins and pantries with just about every ingredient you can imagine. There are cameramen (also robots) patrolling the area to capture all your best moments and to broadcast them directly to your fellow citizens’ devices.

Your instruction? “Make your signature dish. You have one hour, chef.”

It can’t just be straightforward, can it? The land itself is held together with pure chaotic energy. If you’re lucky, all goes as planned. If you aren’t… well…

Roll a Die

1	Your leg is now tied to another chef’s	2	Your meal is continually un-cooking itself.
3	All of your ingredients are pickled now	4	The longer you touch an ingredient, the bigger it gets.
5	Every time you lift your pot lid, a component changes.	6	The aromatics are glowing and flashing like LED lights.
7	Your knife has been replaced with a cheese grater.	8	The ingredients are now magnetically stuck together.
9	Your meal is becoming deep fried.	10	Kittens are multiplying out of the cupboard. *
11	All of your ingredients have become incredibly heavy.	12	Your cook pot moves burners whenever you turn around.
13	Eggs scream when you crack them	14	The kitchen has become incredibly slippery.
15	It’s soup now.	16	All utensils have been replaced with crustaceans. **
17	Your knife has a mind of its own. Watch out!	18	Your fridge catches fire.
19	Your pasta is trying to escape. Go get it.	20	Any ingredient not in the pot starts to float away.

* All kittens disappear at the end.
** These however, stay.

⏵ share a meal ⏴
As all the cooking concludes, you will be invited to plate your meal into one of many casserole dishes, regardless of what was made. A ladle will be tucked into the corner and placed on the table with a folded bit of cardstock declaring the chef’s name and the name of the dish. A helper camerabot will come around to each participant and ask for their thinking and their process.

Even if you got away without having to cook, even looking towards the table of dishes will spur a helper bot to start making you a plate with one of everything. The helperbot will insist that it is rude to not at least try what their peers have made.

In fact, if you are to fill out the score card for each person, you really must taste everything! The robots can’t try the food, so it’s up to you.

The cards look like so. The grading system is opaque. Is it meant to be numbers? Stars? Letter grades? Well, you’re the judge. You figure it out.

Chef: ___________ Dish:_____________ Judge:___________ Overall Rating:_______

Flavor
Presentation
Stackability
Wet
Originality
Rizz

⏵ tummy ache survivor ⏴
No matter how well your compatriots cooked or baked their dishes, there are… factors. You see that carrot? It’s really just condensed chaos in the shape of a carrot. No matter how powerful you are, these particular ingredients may not mesh with your being.

…And even if it is truly a carrot, do all the chefs know the proper cooking temperature of chicken? Even chickens are aliens to many.

(Optional) Roll a Die

1	Tummy Ache. Go lay in bed. Complaining alleviates symptoms.
2	That plate of food has energized you. You feel compelled to race or spar.
3	The food has reminded you of home. You must tell someone a detail of your childhood.
4	That food was so horrible that it simply must be washed out somehow. Spicy peppers? Booze? Gravel??? You’re going to over do it.
5	You have now discovered your new favorite dish. Make them teach it to you or you’ll lose sleep over it. This is all you want to eat for the next week.
6	The oddity of the ingredients has transferred to you. You start floating away.
7	The range of food and textures have inspired you. Acquire an annoying new hobby or habit.
8	You are now haunted by the digital souls of chickens.

⏵ NOTES ⏴

Please direct all questions to our mod queries comment!

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Juvenile hall? Youth detention center? What do you think happens when you get caught wiping a building off Google Maps?

[ Involving Vision in the story helps. Everyone leaves that part out. Heck, even Tommy forgets that Wanda had them to have a happy little home life are Mr. and Mrs. Vision.

He’d be mollified, if Billy had only said that. But Wanda didn’t break the spell, Mephisto did, and Billy… ]

And what do you mean, sense me? You mean one of your tracking spells?

[ But that can’t be it. If Billy could sense people, he’d go full Jedi and be completely insufferable with a blue lightsaber running around Manhattan.

You blew up a school? He’d asked about it, and Tommy hadn’t thought anything of it. Thought he was confirming what he remembered. But he doesn’t remember. And Tommy’s an idiot. ]

I never said I blew up my school, did I?

[ He didn’t. And Billy couldn’t know. Tommy takes a step back in the air, as far as he can without yanking himself free. Billy’s not a telepath; he’s a witch. Fuck you if you’re in my head. ]

[ That checks out and it doesn't check out because like... wouldn't the Avengers want to nab a kid like that up? Not let them go to juvie? He doesn't know, but all he can think of is if Tommy was out there he went somewhere different. Not to a loving home like the Kaplans and his throat constricts at the thought - at the singular word: experiment. ]

[ He doesn't say anything, partly to shove down the emotions that broil over. The problem with being a telepath that almost exclusively works on empathy is you get your own mixed emotions and thoughts and someone else's. And in this case, he doesn't need either to roil in Tommy's distrust. ]

I've tried a few tracking spells. It's not like that.

[ But he can't explain it, doesn't know how. He doesn't have any of the answers the other boy is looking for other than the pieces don't line up. Similarly shaped? But the edges are different, different enough that they might almost fit in but they don't. They don't fit and Tommy asks his question as the rest reverberates as a practical yell in his skull. ]

[ Tommy takes a step back and he visibly flinches before he does, his hands slackening in their grip before realizing what he was supposed to be doing and he doesn't look at him. He can't look at him. ]

No. [ He forces it out, hollow and hard. ] This thing just happens. Whenever someone I'm close to or someone has an intense emotion... or both... I hear it in my head.

I can't stop it. And I am a witch. Mostly. I'm learning.

[ He closes his eyes to stop the stinging, to stop the urge to snap, to do something, because he still feels - ]

Look. I don't have the answers you're looking for. I'm - I didn't even know Wanda and Vision had kids before like - time on the Witches Road is weird? It's been a couple of days maybe?

I don't know. [ It feels like the mantra of his life. He doesn't know. He doesn't know anything and everytime he gets a step closer something else happens. ] Maybe. We're not quite right, but you thought I was Billy? And I thought you were Tommy? That has to mean something, like magick.

[ They did. If Billy did more than wander through emotions and surface thoughts, he’d know that, but right now it’s the furthest thing from Tommy’s mind.

He’s always had the safety of his own head. No one gets to know anything Tommy doesn’t want to tell them. It’s the only thing that’s been completely his to control and now it’s just - not. Just casually. No just accidentally, no heads up, like Tommy’s thoughts are so trivial that he doesn’t merit a courtesy warning before getting violated. ]

You could if you wanted to. You think it’s easy to stay slow for the rest of you? Control doesn’t just happen.

[ The hand barely touching Billy’s starts to vibrate, and Tommy’s fingers slip through Billy’s, with nothing more than a warm tingle. The decision is snap, but deliberate. He needs to be out of range and doesn’t care if it takes forever to drift away. ]

I could’ve blown your hand off. I didn’t. You have to try, you idiot, because if you go around calling yourself a Maximoff, you don’t get the luxury of asking for understanding. They’re never going to trust you if you screw up.

[ The advice doesn’t stop. Billy can be anything he puts his mind to. If he woke up one day and wanted to know what people were thinking, instant telepath, and he’d never know what he’d done. Mind-reader or not, he’s Billy-shaped. ]

You don’t “think” I’m Tommy. Stop lying to yourself. You’re the one in my head, and I’m not the one mixed up about it. Look me in the face and tell me I’m not Tommy Shepherd. Or Maximoff. You can’t. Because I am and I’m not lying.

[ William has always felt guilty. Always. From the moment he'd woken up and heard his parents thoughts for the first time. Give us back our son, they thought but never spoke. They'd treated him with kindness and love like he was their real son and the whole time, he'd lied and use his inability to turn them off to his advantage - not maliciously, to survive. To quiet the voices in his head that he can't just stop. He's tried, he's tried so many times. It's only that Tommy is so loud and he's Tommy - that has to be it, the both of them. ]

[ His eyes no longer burn by the time the other boy pulls his hand from his. He feels the tears, angry and conflicted at once, before he turns his attention upwards - briefly.

Fine. If he didn't want to be near him. That was fine. William had thrown away his identity for the sake of others before, he'd do it again now. (It's not fine). He takes his own step back, feels the blue tinge of power at his fingers, sparking and dying out because he isn't Billy Maximoff. Not the one Tommy expects or wants or needs and - So, the power tries to show itself and it dies off and his mouth is dry.]

You don't think I know that? [ He finally bursts out, the quiet anger sizzling. More Billy than William, more the hurt and the pain and the lost. He's still and sharp and he doesn't care that he's crying even though he hates more than anything that he's a goddamned empath. ] All I've heard is about what a monster Wanda Maximoff is. How she controlled and tortured a town and then did all these horrendous acts. That if it weren't for her I wouldn't exist - [ and the Kaplans would be happy, they'd be better off. He tries to swallow it down] - and I wouldn't have these powers that have already hurt people I care about. Because I'm so much like her.

[ He uses Agatha's words there, something he can't get out of his head. The thing that set him off, but not quite. Powers he can't control, powers he doesn't even know the beginning of. Powers he's not entirely sure he wants anymore, but he can't say that. He's hurt and lost and lost some more. ]

[ He doesn't look up. There's no use saying that's not what he meant. That it hadn't taken being in his head to know he was Tommy. That it was something else. The other wouldn't trust him and he pulls his hands from his sides to tug his hoodie back over his head to look away - to hide his face, something. ]

You already don't trust me. And you know who you are, I don't.

[ He says it in the same rooted manner. In the stillness of a vacuum as he takes another step back. Somehow fully on the precipice of accepting his identity of Billy Maximoff and yet so wholly so fully on the ground as well. He can't be Billy Maximoff, because that's not the one this Tommy is expecting. ]

[ It lands poorly, and Tommy’s anger flares at hearing Billy rattle off Wanda’s “sins” like what people say about her matters. The truth doesn’t make a good story. Oh, Tommy doesn’t doubt that Wanda did something. Doesn’t even question that people got hurt. But he knows that the story doesn’t allow for reasons or extenuating circumstances. It’s why he - they - went looking for Wanda in the first place. They wanted the source.

And whoop-de-doo she made them. That’s what moms do. Call it IVF. Same deal. Alternative conception. Conceived with her mind.

They’re her kids. They’re alive because of her. They got their powers because of her. Without Wanda, what would they be? Nothing. They’d be like a hundred millon other suckers who hope to grind out 45 years of drudgery and retire to a trailer in Florida on Social Security.

They owe Wanda a defense. If Billy wants to sound like he’s ashamed of being like Wanda Maximoff - of being one of the most powerful people in the universe - let him. He deserves to fucking wallow in it. He thinks Tommy doesn’t trust him ? Tommy knows what that blue energy can do, can’t run three feet off the ground, and he didn’t worry for a second. How’s that for trust? ]

TDM 005

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